Discourse 15

On the Outpouring of the Path of Solitude: Briefly and Concisely, and Distinctly, and How and in What Manner the Spiritual Children Are Born from One Another from the Gifts That Are in It. Clearly, Then, and Distinctly: That Thus Is Its Outpouring. From the Labors of the Ascesis of Silence Is Born That Boiling Which Is Turbulent and Without Measure, That Which Is Kindled in the Heart from Hot Thoughts That Are Newly Ignited in the Mind. But the Labors and Vigilances Cut Off That Turbulence by Their Heat and Give It Vision. And That Vision Gives Birth to Hot Thoughts of Which I Spoke, by Means of the Depth of Contemplation of the Soul, That Which Is Called Theory. And This Theory Gives Birth to Boiling. And from This Boiling: Vision from Grace. And When It Is Born: Agitation of Tears. First, That Which Is at Prayer. Then, That Which Sheds Many Streams of Tears for a Man in One Day. And from This: Comes to That Which Has No End. And from Tears: The Soul Receives the Tranquility of Thoughts. And from the Tranquility of Thoughts: One Is Elevated to the Purity of the Intellect. And in Pure Intellect: A Man Comes to That Which Beholds the Hidden Things. Because Purity: by the Tranquility That Is from Strenuous Struggles.

And after these things, he arrives at that which is indicated in the vision of Ezekiel the prophet: that the pattern of these three measures of the souls that draw near to the divine is that the third of them is without transition. For all of these, the beginning is the good desire towards God, and labors that are varied in stillness, and not the impatience that is born from very great separation from the world. Now the distinctions of the labors, it is not necessary to make, for they are known to everyone. But when a person encounters any of these, he does not lack. The remainder, however, a person knows that he increases. For these exist: the labor of hunger, and of cold, and of vigil, the wakefulness of the nights, a person according to his strength. And many prostrations, which a person makes at the times of the day, and many genuflections at night. There is one who makes three prostrations at one time and completes them, and then goes out from before the cross. And there is one who even adds to these more. And there is one who, in one prayer, prolongs three times, and prostrates himself with his face cast down towards his mind, when there is no distraction there, nor any disturbance of thoughts. And both of these great changes show the wealth of grace, which in a varied manner works for each person according to his measure.

If it is the multitude of the first motions that increases the measure, and if it is by force that he receives it into himself, and confines it by means of one of the multitudes of the measures of the first ones—what, then, is the cause of that other prayer and the delay in it, and why it is withheld from practice? It did not appear to me that it is fitting to distinguish between wills such as these, when even the language of speech and the lines of writing are brought to their limits. For if not, the reader will not be able to attain anything from it, and it will appear to him as something laughable. And if, again, he is one who knows these things, he will mock that one who does not know the boundary of the wills, as if he had done something. And from this, then, derision, and from that, laughter; and he becomes for him a barbarian in the matter, like the word of the Apostle which was spoken concerning him who is carried away. But as for the one who is able to know these things, behold, their course is already marked out above. Let practice follow thought, by the grace of our Lord. And what occurs in them practically, he learns from himself. Sit in your cell, and that cell will teach you everything.